Why do people do low DPS?

[Stabface]

How can we help them?

I don't mean just people who are boxing either -- although I've seen from discussions, screenshots, and movies that there are boxers here who are doing low DPS.
I have many friends & guildmates (and PuGs) who also struggle to do even "terrible" DPS. I'm talking about brand new 80's in quest greens and blues pulling ~600-800 DPS... we did this much or more back in T4 content at L70. I just can't understand how it's even possible. I think casting nothing but Lighting Bolt, NAKED, would do this much DPS. Any class should be able to pull I think 1200-1500+ if they have a decent ilvl 175+ gear set, which is trivial with some crafted, quested, or BoE drops. It's definitely not a gear problem, I have a destro warlock in my guild who will pull maybe 1300-1500 in a 5 man... in full T7+ epics including some Ulduar25 pieces. My warlock in similar gear pulls more than double that, 3500+ easily. A bear tank that pulls maybe 6-700 DPS and can't hold threat beyond the duration of a taunt. I've tried helping but they seem to get really defensive or upset about it. I'm at a loss for what to do, we're mostly a casual/family guild but we do raid and there's not enough people as it is. So we can't just not invite these people because we already have to PuG a few slots to fill the raid. Then I get the whispers from the PuGs "you need to kick that lock he's bad" which is quite true actually, but I can't. I need to get them to play better instead.

Really I think doing good DPS comes down to 3 factors:

* Knowing the right buttons to push in the correct order
* Pressing these buttons as fast as you can
* Don't stand in a fire

I need to come up with a non-confrontational way to address particularly the first two... some people are just always going to die in a fire I think.


Ideas ??

[kadaan]

I've had this same issue with a few guilds I've played with. It's incredibly frustrating, and more-so when they refuse your help. We had a resto druid who healed only with Healing Touch, and said she "did just fine, thanks" and refused to even try to use hots. DPS is similar, we'll have parses where someone is using their main ability half as much as someone else. I don't know if they just sit there, press a button, wait 5 seconds, press it again, or what they're doing.

The steps to getting people to do better are:
1. Get them to admit that they could do better
2. Get them to WANT to improve
3. Have them willing to either do some EJ reading, or find them a mentor who knows their class they can get advice from and questions.
4. GIVE THEM FEEDBACK. "Wow X, you did 200dps better on that fight than you did last week! Whatever you're doing different is working!"

As for standing in fire... not much you can do there. Call out in vent when something happens, but don't call them out in vent. "Flame wave coming" "void zone spawned" "laser barrage, get behind mimiron", etc.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Some quick suggestions from someone who typically doesn't do "uber" dps on any of my chars.
Try really, really hard not to come off as condescending. Calling people "terrible" or veiled versions of "needs to l2p" pretty much shut down any effort they've been making to try to learn from you. Garbage in, garbage out. Don't be part of the problem; be part of the solution. Define the measurement criteria. What you do on the 80 target dummy is not the same as the boss dummy, and neither of them tells you dick about certain bosses that are resistant to a particular damage type or skew certain results. What are you using to measure the DPS? We've discussed several times how much variation there is among damage meters. Also, are we talking about DPS against a boss that takes 5+ minutes to kill or against a heroic boss that dies in 45 seconds? (i.e.: how long should said DPS be sustainable for?) Additionally, you need to define what buffs the player is expected to have and what debuffs the target is expected to have, as both of these can drastically change the DPS with identical rotations/gear. Assist with gear research. Not talking about how close something is to BIS, talking about whether the stat distribution makes sense. I.e.: should they be focusing on +hit or on +dmg or something else. This isn't as clear cut as you'd think to most folks. Might also remind people about diminishing returns and when it starts affecting things. Point out tools to help with ability rotations. A good macro can make or break DPS, as can knowing what the priority is for abilities. Knowing when cooldowns are coming up is also important. Find out whether, when the DPS is "sucking" whether they're experiencing system problems at the time. Certain mods and macro flubs can cause notable delays in abilities firing on time, which can reduce DPS. If the person's system is lagging in a big fight, they might not be able to tell when things happen that need attention. Low FPS means not seeing a cooldown pulse or not being able to watch a cooldown/timer bar very well, or missing a mob's cast that needs to be interrupted or a debuff that needs to be taken advantage of. This may seem minor to those of us with quad-core beast machines but everyone doesn't have that capability. If you have the same class as they do, try some things out WITH them to see if you see obvious gaps in execution. Not only will you better be able to help identify things like conflicting cooldowns/GCDs, you also make them feel like someone's willing to help without just saying "OMG STOP SUCKING YOU NOOBTARD!"Lots of things to be cognizant of, but the biggest one is being helpful and non-condescending. All it takes is one jibe or insult from you to turn off people from wanting to even deal with you, let alone accept criticism from you, no matter how valid. It's not really hard, either. You just have to get out of the mindset that everyone should be able to not suck without having done much research at all. Not everyone can just plunk down a fresh 80 in greens and zing off 1000+ dps on their first 80 instance run.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

[Velassra]

I do low DPS because I want to see the Tank sweat and to ask the Priest: "Heals?"

I also do low DPS becaue I'm too busy picking my nose or scatching my balls.

I do low DPS because "American Idol" is on the TV.

I do low DPS because I don't give a fuck.

Anyone of them could apply really.

[Normak]

trying not to sound like a eliest, i think Wow has become too medicore

people just dont really care and are happy to meander on and not willing to learn their class

back in the days of old you had dps and healing charts, if you did your job poorly you stood out and where likely to be dropped from raids

these days raiding has become akin to normal 5man pugs, hardcore gaming has left the world and blizzard has made it so :pinch:

[Dorffo]

i think a lot of it depends on how much attention is being spent focusing on doing DPS. This is the same reason that some multiboxers fail at DPS as well I think. in the case of someone playing multiple roles simultaneously as we do while multiboxing, especially mixed groups, it's easy to let concentration slip from maintaining an optimal DPS rotation. In the case of solo toons who don't perform I think often times you'd find that they're sitting there in /tells or watching TV/Movie or talking to people in RL or what have you...

Why DPS and not Tanks/Heals so much?
If a tank were to decide to play one handed while watching Dr Phil and texting his friends, you can bet that that tank wouldn't ever get to the point where you'd run into him in a heroic PuG (or the content has been on farm long enough that it just doesnt matter... but that's a different scenario). DPS on the otherhand can get away with that sort of behavior, and often do as far as I can tell.

Factors in DPS (IMO): player skill > Gear Level > Spec

As for what to do about said players... feedback is a good place to start, motivation to makes changes is important as well. We had a hunter join our 10-man uld crew, RL friend of the raid leader etc. He came in in a mix of T7/7.5 and struggled to break 2k. At first he was very defensive and offended that we questioned his performance. However, after pointing out that shamBot_03 who I'd been happy to replace with a real person was parsing significantly better DPS on the same encounters he changed the attitude a fair bit.

remedy:
He started reading up on how to play his toon, agreed to try a better spec and also agreed to turn off the TV during raid times.

edit: spelling :( and also to note that I don't pull top end DPS on any of my toons solo or multiboxing :)

[Ualaa]

To improve damage in general, well play actually be it a tank or healer or dps...

There is situational awareness... ie moving out of fire.
There is rotation or sequence of abilties.
There is game mechanic knowledge... ie how threat works etc.
There is gearing... going for what improves your class the most.
There is desire... beat the boss efficiently, minimal deaths etc.

If any one of them are lacking, the toon won't be close to optimal.

If the player genuinely wants to improve, see later content, not spend as much on repairs etc, addons can help. Ideally, you have the addons enabled that help you to raid, but as few as possible so your system doesn't lag too much. Healbot or Grid, can greatly help a healer toon, for example.

[heffner]

Ya, I doubt it's rocket science as to why. Specifically in an individual case, well, that's what WWS is for.

Assuming it's not so obvious as spec and/or gear, I'd say it comes down to:

1) using the correct spell rotation
2) maximizing your spell casting while managing mana
3) watching for your procs (e.g., eclipse, hotstreak) and performing the appropriate actions
4) proper use of trinkets

[alcattle]

I will take the other side. I am the one with lousy DPS. I am more casual, I dinged 70 late, I dinged 80 late. After most at finish Sunwell, I finished kara. Two things, I was trying to get in the right place and listen to everything one must do, and then try and kill stuff. I don't know the ultimate rotations, and only use half my spells, lucky to those used. My gear was poor, and talents were mixed up mess. I would listen and read, but it still takes alot of time.

[Marious]

Yeah kind of sucks when I go do some Heroic runs and the DPS stinks and the other shave to carry that said person. And as you have pointed out as well the guy could be geared up to the teeth and still suck! I seen it many time's, the healing sucks and the dps sucks and well that just kills everyone.

Now for the tank, sure its great to put out some decent DPS and all that but its also about your tank abilities not all of them are major DPS abilities but they are there for a reason and some tanks just can't figure that one out for some reason so they dont use them, hell when I started out I would skip some of my abilities or just use the wrong one and that would screw up my tankage so I screw over who ever I was PUGING with. Its unfortunate but it happens and hence its a PUG, hell I use to play with another DPS and healer, father and son that played together and any time I was on they ask me to come tank, this happen for quite a few months, it was great when we could get another 2 good DPS, but if we only got 1 we where screwed, we had a huntard(I see know why some people are called that) this guy was terrible, he was so bad that the run ended and everyone was pisteoff cause of this guy.

It really kills the game when you run into this type of people, makes it worse when you let them know that they need to improve some, of course they take it badly, cause honestly who want to be told they suck? Regardless of how tactful you are, but if more than one person talks to them and not getting bombarded by you suck by everyone, so from one person it might not sound good at all so I would say one good way to handle it would be to talk to a few people first get some ideas and see if everyone agrees that said person is just doing bad, could be that they had a bad night or something or something else is going on, can't always just chuck it up to the person being teribad could be something going on so have to try and handle it correctly.

[kadaan]

Oh! There's a wiki that an ex-guildie put together to address this exact problem: http://www.raider101.com/


Welcome to Raider 101! This site is designed for people new to raiding in World of Warcraft. It is intended to be an overview of the talent builds, ability rotations, and all other elements necessary to become a successful raider. Raider 101's emphasis is on plain and straightforward advice that will make the beginning raider a solid contributor to the team.

[Bigfish]

DPS is so simple its disgusting. The only reason people don't do it well in game is some of the ridiculous rotations required and a general lack of knowledge on how to set up a rotation. Nothing in game really spells this out, so you natuarally have people who *gasp* play for fun, but utterly stink at what passes for gameplay. Bottom line, every class can be reduced to one button spam with properly configured macros.

[Smootykins]

Its pretty simple. People who struggle to do "terrible" dps just don't care. They're usually eating while playing, watching tv, or carrying on tell/vent chats. Sometimes all at once. Advice is usually lost on them, cause only an idiot plays a char for 80 levels and still doesn't know how to press buttons constantly. They know this and are offended by it no matter how its usually put, but normally not offended enough to try.

Your only options are to replace them. Rage at them to distract them from their tv show/erp tell session. Hope they ebayed and are willing to take advice.



Well.. I thought about it some more and I remembered I was in a similar situation and solved it. We just talked the low output person into installing a dps meter. Once they have a running account of their fail they got self conscious and started to pay attention to output. Situation improved drastically.

Also, remember. You can stay guilded with bad players and talk to them regularly. You just don't have to raid with them if its stressing you out. Sit out and run with groups of folks you know are good, but keep in touch.

[EaTCarbS]

Really I think doing good DPS comes down to 3 factors:

* Knowing the right buttons to push in the correct order
* Pressing these buttons as fast as you can
* Don't stand in a fire


Also...

* Having a good talent Spec
* GEAR GEAR GEAR

[Normak]

we're mostly a casual/family guild but we do raid and there's not enough people as it is

I think what most of the peeps have suggested to try are great ideas

but at the risk as sounding like a defeatist, the quote and actualy raiding dont mix very well

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Lol. I thought the OP's point was to start a thread about how to help people DPS better, not bashing anyone under 3k as being a mouthbreather. Guess my standards are still set too high.

[Khatovar]

It also helps if people have even the faintest idea about any of thier class mechanics. Such as the resto druid above who doesn't use HoTs. I've seen warlocks who melee like they're warriors. I've seen rogues who attack from the front, practically going out of thier way to eat cleaves. I've seen healers who won't heal themselves. It's almost like they never look at any spell they get after level 10. There's been more than a few times where I've just been amazed by the ferocity with which some people suck.

Try asking them why they do the things they do and then explaining why some other way is better. Like that druid would probably say "because I want to heal people when they need it, not waste my mana on heals they don't need yet/have to wait on." And you'd say "HoTs are more mana efficient than HT spam and keeping HoTs rolling on your tank frees you up to toss heals to other people when things go bad or there's AOE damage. And it still leaves you with the option to Swiftmend at any time for a big instant heal."

[Ualaa]

For a while, there was a guildy hunter...

Level 60, melee with two weapons.
Did not use ranged attacks of any sort.
Did not have a pet, because they were useless.
Mostly Survival, some Marksman (I think).
This was during our ZG/MC days, classic wow.

But he had fun, with his two or three melee moves.

[Tdog]

My recommendation?
If you're a Hardcore guild - Boot their arce out! You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped peroid. If they refuse to learn or be helped they are basically kicking themselves out as Hardcore guilds are there to get kills, not carry dead weight.

Causual Guild? - Deal with it. Again people can't be helped if they don't want to be helped, but as long as they aren't a-holes while being terribad players it's just something causal guilds will have to deal with.

Obviously if you offer help and they accept, then great. But some people don't want to be helped even when they know they are horrible at something.

[Simulacra]

When I was a young mage at level 60 having pretty much quested to that level and not having grouped much I had no idea that my talent spec was rubbish and my dps was terrible as I was ok at killing non instance mobs. I got a wake up call while going for some attunement or other when I HAD to join a raid. It was a 10 man in UBRS. Within 20 minutes the damage meters came up and the raid leader asked me if I wanted to be kicked. I asked why? He said look at the damage meters......I was 8th. I was a mage and I was 8th. Terrible. BUT at the time I didn't realise that was bad, I didn't realise that as a mage I should have been #1 or #2 because no-one told me. He whispered to me "learn2play nub" As soon as I found out what was expected of me I went and read everythng I could about magedom and my DPS increased substantially, my cc was great via a macro and also discovered that I wasn't supposed to be a selfish bastard but actually offer people water/food and a portal at the end.

So I think it's about managing expectations whether they are family, friends or not. Real friends will not get offended if you make a comment ie I had a warrior at level 18 and grouped with a bunch of RL friends from work in the deadmines. The very next day the guy who introduced me to wow said that I was the single worst tank he'd ever seen and he was right, I knew he was right and didn't take offence.

[Iceorbz]

less coddling, more /gkick!

I won't play with people that will waste my time, it's one of the things i value most. If they wont fix it, especially if you are handing the information to them on a silver platter then boot their asses.

[Zal]

less coddling, more /gkick!

I won't play with people that will waste my time, it's one of the things i value most. If they wont fix it, especially if you are handing the information to them on a silver platter then boot their asses.
:thumbsup:

[Fef]

I have been in the shoes of the "n00b" that needs to "L2P" many times. Very little grouping, very few instances, so basically I was always under geared and never knew strategies (reading things on the net is usually not enough, and anyway doesn't compare with real experience). Most of the time people would just behave like jerks, really not friendly or helpful at all. So actually I stopped grouping all together. That made end-game content rather empty to me, and that's what got me into multiboxing.

That's actually one of the reasons why I love multiboxing : If I fail, it's my fault, I can blame nobody else for it, and nobody else is going to blame me for it. I only play alone, with real life friends, or with people I have known basically from release and who didn't forget it's a game

It is interesting to see that all the PUG invitations on the trade channel (which is already annoying) seem to ask for people who already know the encounters and already have the gear. Hhuu ...

Now, it is true that lack of focus tends to drop DPS. I can run an Heroic Utgarde Keep in 45 minutes without one character dying when I'm focus, or in 1h30 with several wipes when I'm busy doing other things at the same time. I guess in a raid it must be very noticeable too.

[Tonuss]

less coddling, more /gkick!

I won't play with people that will waste my time, it's one of the things i value most. If they wont fix it, especially if you are handing the information to them on a silver platter then boot their asses.I agree with this. Even when there is a small pool of available players, the most important thing is to try and find the ones that are willing to improve and want to improve. Some players will react defensively no matter how you try to approach them, and they feel that it's "too much work" to learn enough about their class to provide the necessary DPS. You don't want those players, you will spend a LOT of your time trying to help them and they will simply shit all over your efforts because they don't care.

You want the players who will listen and improve. Some of them may need to be coddled a bit at first, but as long as they seem to be 'teachable' they will improve and will mellow out soon enough. Some of those players may take some effort to get them to catch up, but as long as they are willing to listen and seem to be putting in the effort, they're worth the time spent. It isn't always about how much you know about the class, as it is about how willing you are to learn. Find those people and you'll not only have a better raid force, you'll live longer from not suffering a burst vessel every raid night.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Its been my experience that people who do low dps are people who are scared to pull aggro. Most likely they have been chastised in the past for over aggro and prolly cause deaths and wipes.

Second to that is they are people that hold back on all of their trinkets and cool downs in a 60 min instance run to blow them only 2-3 times on boss fights instead of every 2-3 min when the cool downs are up.

[Caspian]

Wowwebstats.com

Don't just use it to say OMG Timmy is doing 2389472398 DPS and Johnny is doing 7 DPS lol.

Go to the break Downs. See who is casting what and when. we used it my my group on Flame Leviathan. We had some people using the Siege Rockets and Some Using the Cannon - same for the Demolishers. I drilled down and showed that siege gunners using Cannons did more then 2x the damage as the ones shooting rockets. Also proved out the exact opposite for Demo's their rockets do more damage then the Cannon. We got everyone on the same page and made FL even easier then he was before.

You already know you have to approach it gently because these are friends or family. Take the approach outside of a raid, maybe even outside of WoW, that you want to help them. Maybe use a little guilt if you are stuck somewhere - "We all need to step it up to beat X. I was checking out the WWS and noticed that Timmy is using fireball and you are using your wand a lot. Next time try your fireball a bit more."

We had a girl that played a mage and started raiding. She started late in TBC so got geared quickly. She tried really hard but she was always 30% below the other mages with little to no gear gap. I got the group on WWS and one of our "pro" mages really got into it. He picked up what she was doing wrong right away - Using Pyroblast as her main spell. He got her on vent before a raid one night and talked about his rotation with her and got her to make a couple changes. That night she was #2 behind him in DPS. She didn't know about elitestjerks or much else, was too shy to ask and thoght the DPS difference was because of her gear. Our mage that helped her took a tactful approach and was able to get her to listen, once she had some help she took off.

A lot of these types of people are not the classic gamer type like a lot of us are. Some may not care but most may not even realize they could be better or understand how to improve. In my experience taking the approach for a "team" perspective is the best way to start "Everyone needs to step it up so we are all looking at the WWS to see where we can help each other make improvements".

[zanthor]

It's all about the 3 R's of DPS.

Rotation
Rotation
Rotation

No amount of gear and proper talent builds will counter a bad rotation.

[Saithe]

It's all about the 3 R's of DPS.

Rotation
Rotation
Rotation

No amount of gear and proper talent builds will counter a bad rotation.

Amen. I remember back in the old, OLD day of Vanilla WoW I was doing a Maraudon run with my guild. There was another Hunter of a similar level with us, and I just blew him out of the water in terms of DPS. I was on Vent with them, and asked the other Hunter what kind of rotation he used (/reminisce of Aimed Shot weaving) and he said he didn't know how to use one. I promised to teach him how, but never saw him again.

Some people just fail to adapt to changing rotations too. Same Hunter of mine running through Blood Furnace. Two things came of it. One, I met a level 62 Paladin that didn't have the rez spell because he was power leveled and never bother (/headdesk). And Two, the other Hunter was also failing at DPS. I happened to have a good damage meter that told me what spells he was using primarily, and it turned out he was using the same old Pre-BC rotation that absolutely sucked once BC came out. I whispered him and explained why Aimed Shot was the fail sauce (but with a little more tact than that), and after a while of discussion, he thanked me for the advice.

I had/am having the same problem with my current characters even now. I recently gave my Warrior a DPS spec (was Prot/Prot for a while, because Tanking is what I do best), and he's currently doing at 80 about the same damage as the currently level 72 Hunter, simply because I've never played a DPS Warrior before and haven't gotten used to the rotations. Even the Hunter I keep talking about suffered from horrible DPS when I picked him back up again after about 5 months to get him into WotLK. It took me a couple days, but once I adjusted my spec/rotation to fit the new expansion, my DPS almost doubled.

Sometimes it's just the person though. There's a Hunter in my guild who does crazy DPS in their 25 man raids, and they always talk about how good he is at DPS. One of the other Hunters talked to him about Hunter mechanics for a couple hours. Afterwards, the lesser DPS Hunter said it blew his mind, because the other Hunter wasn't necessarily doing things because they were the best way to do it, but because he just *liked* doing it that was and it worked.

[Decadence]

* Knowing the right buttons to push in the correct order - Correct
* Pressing these buttons as fast as you can - Incorrect, Pressing these buttons at the correct times = more dps than button mashing.
* Don't stand in a fire - Correct
* Loot the hounds - Added
Changes made 8|

[Khatovar]

* Loot the hounds - Added


Don't you mean "LOOT THE F$(&$&%$(% HOUNDS FOR F*#(^&%^@ SAKE!!!!eleventyone!! -50 DKP!!"?





At least that what it was in my guild in those days. ;(

[Tombs]

These are the main reasons I have found for people doing terrible DPS, in no particular order.

1.) Not paying attention to the fight, watching TV
2.) Clickers
3.) Crappy computer
4.) Lack of knowledge of class/rotation/itemization
5.) Stubborn, "good enough", or just not really into the game (Guild Leader's girlfriend for instance)
6.) Some players are actually really young, trying to explain itemization, rotations, and hotkeys is lost on an eight year old.

[Gadzooks]

* Pressing these buttons as fast as you can
I actually disagree with this - most rotations do have time involved, and if you push the GCD, you can screw things up for crits, especially with casters.

Here's how I break it down:

Class knowledge. Do the right attacks, at the right time, in the right rotations, to do the right job. You want to crit as much as possible, if you're not draining, interrupting or anything else like that. This takes some effort on the player's part. If you're raid leader, learn to pull reports for boss fights and study them for problems, like the mage never getting a crit.

Gear. Obviously. But enchants, jewelry, gems and other goodies also make a HUGE, HUGE difference. Are all your casters wearing titanium spellshock at minimum? The better gems? Does everyone have good glyphs, trinkets, and idols?

Raid knowledge. This can be the hardest part. Back when I raided, I joined a new raid team that had to learn as we went - we knew the tactics, but we had to learn to act as a group, and learn that what we do can effect other players. The raid leader and the players have to be willing to learn their role as DPS, heals, and tanking, AND as a whole. Like, what buffs to use, what totems to drop, should the rogue take a poison off because of the WF totem, things like that. Are the casters and healers using their talents effectively, or just spamming buttons and wasting mana? Do the druids never cast innervate on anyone else? See what I'm saying.

The raid I was in was all casual players, and we started in Zul Gurub, and we figured it all out in about a month's worth of raiding.It took a lot of talking on vent, explaining everyone's role, especially the tank - and teaching people what things like offtanks were and assisting were, and targets - it was kind of scary how little some players who'd been through MC did'nt have a clue about any of it, because they'd been carried in a 40 man where mistakes could be overlooked (and usually were).

Attitude. If the raid leader freaks out at wipes, you'll lose the team fast. Patience is key. Communication - you want people talking about what they're doing, not about American Idol - and most importantly, your players need to not be afraid to show they don't know something, and ask about it. I have run with many, many, many refugees from raiding guilds who were expected to be experts when you join, and were thrilled to pieces they could ask questions on our raids, no matter how stupid.

Mostly, have fun. If you're not having fun, it's time to scale back and give the team a few wins on bosses on farm, to get their spirits up. Wiping endlessly where everyone runs back in silence and the raid leadership are cussing or freaking out or being mean is a good way NOT to play.

Take your team, go to an instance you have on farm, even if it's not Ulduar or Naxx, and practice, practice, practice. Call a practice raid once a week in an Outlands 10 man, like Shadow Lab or Mechanar, and practice - it'll be easy enough that if you screw up you won't wipe.

[Gadzooks]

i think a lot of it depends on how much attention is being spent focusing on doing DPS. This is the same reason that some multiboxers fail at DPS as well I think. in the case of someone playing multiple roles simultaneously as we do while multiboxing, especially mixed groups, it's easy to let concentration slip from maintaining an optimal DPS rotation. In the case of solo toons who don't perform I think often times you'd find that they're sitting there in /tells or watching TV/Movie or talking to people in RL or what have you...

It's interesting that you say that, because I've had a shift in how I look at my teams, and it's becoming less important to me that my guys all crit and have huge damage reports, and more important that I am getting consistent results, with good solid healing, so if it takes an extra minute or two to burn some mobs or a boss down, so be it - surviving is more important now than two shotting everything in sight.

I got it by getting frustrated with my current team, a priest, a pally, and a rogue. The Pally was consistently topping the damage meter, over a rogue 4 levels higher with better gear - and the rogues dps was about a quarter of what it should be. So I slowed it down and studied the fights and found the errors in my rotations, and after a few days of experimenting I have have the rogue and pally just about neck and neck in DPS - and it's high dps. The priest can now sit back, heal, apply some dots, and I can manually do her rotations if the mobs live long enough. :) It's a lot less hectic, and they are a killing machine again. I had to bring my 80 mage once or twice, but it's smooth sailing now.

Next I need to work on threat. The Pally loses threat too easily from the rogue. It's a timing thing, I need to overhaul the pally's macros. The two kill so fast, it's not an issue yet, because I'm not running dungeons.

[Zaelar]

Either they aren't trying or they fail at life. Being unaware of the mechanics on some fights is sometimes a reason but typically if it's important then the raid will tell you, like standing in dead sparks on malygos or in the blue circles on iron council.

Gear isn't a major issue. Once you're at least in 200 blues, aside from a few pieces(usually weapons or trinkets) you aren't going to see a big dps increase items. A full tier upgrade is going to help but a couple pieces isn't.

Unless you have some really retarded spec, it isn't going to be a big issue either. As long as you have all of the key talents the rest won't matter much.

Rotation doesn't matter all that much. As long as you're using the spells you should be using(and only the spells you should be using mr. arcane barraging frost mage) getting them all lined up perfectly isn't going to make a big difference. Castrandom with a hunter isn't ideal, but it isn't far off from what a real rotation is going to do. A frost mage doing straight frostbolt spam and using cooldowns whenever they're available isn't going to be far behind once that's timing cooldowns properly and using ice lance during fingers or frost procs.

Glyphs sometimes matter. Flame shock is very important for elemental shamans, but after that the difference between all of the other reasonable glyphs isn't so great.

Just mash whatever skills/spells you speced for and you'll do passable dps. Do them in some reasonable order and you'll do decent dps(like an ele shaman doing flame shock then lava burst). As a general rule, at least for casters, it's not worth it to stop casting to wait for a powerful cooldown, IE if lava burst is .5 seconds away from being usable, cast another lightning bolt or chain lightning instead of waiting for it.

So basically just tell them what spells/skills to use, a rough order to do them in, never stop attacking unless you need to get out of the fire, and to mash instead of waiting since it'll help minimize lag downtime. It won't be the best dps but it should get at least decent.

[Basilikos]

I used to do bad DPS. Sort of. I say "sort of" not because my numbers were so-so, but because I KNEW I was bad and took steps to fix it gradually.

My mixed group hit 80 and I as using Naive rotations (i.e. spamming primary damage spells) with nothing else. I knew what my rotations should have been and I started implementing them. It worked out a lot better right off the bat. Then, I converted both of my mixed groups to using almost solely macros in order to control them. This is EVEN BETTER. Aside from the oddball proc (depending on class and spec), this is just fine. Each DPSer was doing well over one thousand DPS without buffs. Note that I had NOT finished ANY instances or instance quests when I was doing these tests. The gear these characters used for testing DPS and rotations was half green and half blue. All of the group quests outside of instaces had been completed.

Anyhow, with group buffs, these characters were all doing well over fifteen hundred DPS and some were closer to two thousand DPS. This is a Mage, Druid, and Shaman DPS team. And further more, this DPS was sustainable. Yay me!

Others have said it - the bottom line is rotations. The gear will come, but you need to know your class and how to use your spells first.

Also, I haven't played with any Trinkets. The characters I play with are all wearing them, I just haven't used them for anything yet. I'll have to fool around with them in gameplay and report back.

[Sychosys]

I have been in the shoes of the "n00b" that needs to "L2P" many times. Very little grouping, very few instances, so basically I was always under geared and never knew strategies (reading things on the net is usually not enough, and anyway doesn't compare with real experience). Most of the time people would just behave like jerks, really not friendly or helpful at all. So actually I stopped grouping all together. That made end-game content rather empty to me, and that's what got me into multiboxing.

That's actually one of the reasons why I love multiboxing : If I fail, it's my fault, I can blame nobody else for it, and nobody else is going to blame me for it. I only play alone, with real life friends, or with people I have known basically from release and who didn't forget it's a game

It is interesting to see that all the PUG invitations on the trade channel (which is already annoying) seem to ask for people who already know the encounters and already have the gear. Hhuu ...

Now, it is true that lack of focus tends to drop DPS. I can run an Heroic Utgarde Keep in 45 minutes without one character dying when I'm focus, or in 1h30 with several wipes when I'm busy doing other things at the same time. I guess in a raid it must be very noticeable too.I know that's why I am here as well! I work at a video game studio so I am not alone in my playing of WoW, but you should see the puzzled looks I get when I mention I am multiboxing for teh purpose of not having to group with other people. They can not understand that I just enjoy playing WoW, I like talking with people, but Id rather play it alone so I dont have to deal with, well from reading alot of these posts, half the people here! hehe. Its a game, I enjoy playing games. I do not play the game to play it how someone else thinks I should :)

on the original topic though. I do enjoy learning how to play differently/better. There was a very nice guild on Shattered Halls that trained me in druid tanking that I was very appreciative of. The guy had no problem explaining just about anything to me... Just beware of trying to get a straight answer about target marking symbols ;) hehe

[ciscokid454]

I play a hunter generally as my main character(albeit very casual now compared to vanilla/bc), and there's a new recruit hunter in the guild i'm in.
Last night I was sitting in IF crafting flasks before switching over to Xmute for 3.2, whene the recruit start's spouting off in guild chat about the cost of arrows from the AH.
I think someone had 500 of the saronite arrows for 9g50s, which is high, especially if you can mine the mats yourself and get someone to craft the boxes for you.
This lead to a 20 minute back and forth discussion where, people were explaining the cost of raiding to him, and he constantly came up with the excuse, that "unless you're a hunter, you wouldn't understand"...
(the hunter above is constantly beat on the meters by a friend playing his boomkin alt, that's in lvl 70 arena epics)
In vanilla/bc I generally carried abour 5k arrows with me at all times, plus pots/flasks, food etc.
There are alot of people playing this game that just don't seem to understand.
Whether it's why a piece of gear is better for them, why x consumable should be used over another.
This rotation versus that. There are truly casual people that are just interested in loot moreso than anything else.

[falsfire3401]

Lol I should get my friend to email me some of the screenshots he's taken when running heroic PUGs. He plays a healer and his wife the tank, he's told me of many a heroic where a DPS DK or hunter or rogue is doing 600 dps at level 80, with 5+ epics on them.

Umm...when your dps is THAT bad, are you even facing the right direction? Cuz just plain ol' white damage should produce higher dps than what some scrubs put out in PUGs these days...

I ran a Naxx pug once on my hunter, a 10-man, and there was one other hunter in the group. When I observed after a full wing that he was barely reaching 800 dps (and he had better gear than me, several 25-man pieces), I shortly realized why. He kept Aspect of the Viper on 100% of the time "so I don't run out of mana" he said. I tried politely to tell him you can toggle it on and off, and that it only takes 6 seconds of AotV to restore your whole mana bar, but he just insisted that he was better off just leaving it on all the time and it was too much hassle to switch it on and off, then he flamed me for having a "noob" survival spec, that all real dps hunters use marksman and if I knew anything about marksman I'd know it consumes more mana and you need viper up all the time.

I tried to explain that my 'noob' 0/15/56 survival spec was letting me do 4x the damage he did, and then I switched to my 2nd spec, marksman, and showed him I can do just as good dps in MM spec and still only have to toggle Viper on occasionally...

[EvoX]

I'm sure that as I get my RAF groups boosted up to 60, I'll be in a good position to start to l2p the different classes. Thats when I would really like to develop good habits/playstyle. Thanks for the raiding 101 link, but can anyone recommend a widely acceptable dps meter that I can use to gauge my own progress?

[Mercurio]

I'm sure that as I get my RAF groups boosted up to 60, I'll be in a good position to start to l2p the different classes. Thats when I would really like to develop good habits/playstyle. Thanks for the raiding 101 link, but can anyone recommend a widely acceptable dps meter that I can use to gauge my own progress?

Yep, get Recount. Has always served me well.

[Tonuss]

Lol I should get my friend to email me some of the screenshots he's taken when running heroic PUGs. He plays a healer and his wife the tank, he's told me of many a heroic where a DPS DK or hunter or rogue is doing 600 dps at level 80, with 5+ epics on them.

Umm...when your dps is THAT bad, are you even facing the right direction? Cuz just plain ol' white damage should produce higher dps than what some scrubs put out in PUGs these days...

That always amazes me with hunters. We had a hunter like that in our ZG runs way back when, it was a young boy IRL (and a nice kid) who would be near the bottom of the DPS meters whenever he joined us. And by near the bottom, I mean near the BOTTOM. Holy priests who would cast the occasional DPS spell were close to his damage sometimes.

I mean, you're a hunter. If the only thing you do is send your pet and hit auto-shot, you should do XXX DPS. How can you be doing HALF of that? The only way is if you're not even attacking half the time!!!

[Clone]

I used to be a guild leader in a semi hardcore guild. We had a few people in the guild who where not up to the same level as our top dps. I took them and the top dps aside and asked the top dps to make a macro which best matched their cast rotations and put it in a cast sequence. Spec's werent debateable in that guild so it was either the low dps wasnt pushing the right spells at the right time, where clicking or had a bad pc (low fps).

The macros where given to the low dps people and told to be bound to key 1 on the keyboard. Then the macro was to be spammed 8+times per second for the whole fight. The top dps people where also using the macro to dps. When we tried it on a boss fight we no longer had any low dpsers. They all came out about the same. This was slightly lower than it would be if people where pressing the buttons manually, but it got over the block in the minds of the low dps people that it was all about gear/having no life.

After the low dps people saw how the macro worked they then (with help from the high dpsers). Learned to press the buttons manually and most of them did improve their dps then quite dramatically. There where still a couple of people whos dps was lacking but I do think it was because of pc/connection issues there.

I do think for the most part though that the problem is with those low dps people, they are just happy to accept that player X is better/has no life/better gear etc. Rather than do the research to maximise their own dps.

Ive done some pug raids with my ele shamans in Wotlk and I just used the same macro as I use while boxing for my dps. Thats because I was learning tactics and didnt want to make any mistakes (Im usually a min/max whore). My dps was always in the top 5 for 25 man raids. Couple of times I was first (Vs far better geared players).

So in summary I dont think Ill ever understand how some people are so bad at this game, but there is hope of improving people if you can get them to follow simple instructions. If you cant get them to do that then you definately need to consider wether you and the rest of your raid group are going to be happy carrying said people for the rest of your raiding days.

[Bot]

i had a couple of good friends in a guild that did very poor dps. we're talking 5-600 at lvl 80. the first step i took was in private individually asking them if they new what the meters that all the noobs always post after every trash pull meant. they both said no and i explained that it was the damage per second meter and asked if they new why they were so low on them.

well, as expected, neither had a clue. so started my quest to figure it out. i started off by finding a few numbers such as target hit ratings and whatnot and some basic rotations and specs. both were fully invested in only a single tree, and severely under hit cap. then i started telling them were i was finding all this great info. now theyve gone from totally clueless to decent well mannered very competent dps with only a little proding on my part. and now i cant keep them off of elitist jerks. they actually like reading the wws parses as well and often find things i miss.

also keep in mind not everyone has even heard about wowhead let alone sites like EJ, wow-heroes, wws, maxdps or even RAWR. so it may not be just laziness. hell some people dont even know what addons are.

so imho just be tactful and private about it and be as helpful as posible and eventually they usually come around.

[Drew]

I guess you could say I'm one of the "clueless but trying to change" ones. I mostly play solo, or group with people in my casual guild, and we do pretty well. None of us are epically geared, and there are only 2 80s among us. (I'm not one of them, though my just-about-74 Druid will be 80 next week sometime.)

I've started using recount to track my DPS, and downloaded RAWR to check out my gear, but there's still one thing I don't know - how much DPS should I be doing? I won't be in Uludar epics anytime soon, and the best I'm looking at right now is a full set of Eviscerator's Battlegear (http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=813) that I'll be crafting myself once I skill up a few more points and get all the leather.

Here's what RAWR says about me now (at level 73):

Overall Points: 2120.311
DPS Points: 1903.32
Survivability Points: 216.99

Optimal Rotation DPS: 1903.32
Custom Rotation DPS: 1140.383

After loading up a full Eviscerator Set and setting the talents to lvl 80 Cat, I get this:

Overall Points: 3570.162
DPS Points: 3341.272
Survivability Points: 228.89

Optimal Rotation DPS: 3341.272
Custom Rotation DPS: 1764.553

Right now my recount average is about 520 or so, well below what RAWR's telling me. The thing is, RAWR says to keep up a 4 point Savage Roar - a spell I don't get until level 75! I know I can't come close to that 1903 right now, but with the Eviscerator Set, Savage Roar and level 80 talent points, is that 3341 really something I can pull down?

[MrHeppman]

Right now my recount average is about 520 or so, well below what RAWR's telling me. The thing is, RAWR says to keep up a 4 point Savage Roar - a spell I don't get until level 75! I know I can't come close to that 1903 right now, but with the Eviscerator Set, Savage Roar and level 80 talent points, is that 3341 really something I can pull down?

Feral dps is commonly viewed as the hardest dps spec, so it's not so easy to meet the optimal rotation dps numbers. You have to count combat points while keeping track of four timers, and it can give anyone a migraine.

When my cat dinged level 80 a couple of days ago I did 1600 dps on a training dummy in questing greens and blues. Then i crafted a couple of epics (shoulders, belt and the Titansteel destroyer mace), downloaded an addon that helped my keep track of my timers and - viola! - i did 3600 dps on the dummy. I beat fully naxx-geared dps on my first 5-man heroic boss fight. The total dps is much lower, usually 1800-1900, and I can't reach 3600 on boss fights since it's hard to keep an optimal rotation up when having to move and look for other things, but I usually pull out 2500-3000 dps on bosses.